Pride, yes. But no prejudice, please.

The closing-night film of this year’s Chennai International Queer Film Festival is about marginalised groups, but not in the way you expect.

It’s probably best to hear the story from the man who wrote it. In a Guardian interview, screenwriter Stephen Beresford recalled a meeting with film producer David Livingstone in September 2010. Livingstone asked, “Is there any story you are burning to write?” As it turned out, there was one, about miners in the Dulais valley in South Wales who were caught up in the longest strike in British history – it began on 5 March 1984 and lasted until 3 March 1985. Margaret Thatcher’s government, determined to slash subsidies to loss-making industries (and simultaneously diminish the power and influence of trade unions), announced that 20 coal pits were to close. The result? Several locally organised strikes – after all, 20,000 jobs were lost. The strike then went national, headed by the National Union of Mineworkers. In short, all the makings of an impassioned on-screen drama.

But this is just the background of the story Beresford wanted to tell. What interested him, really, was the source of the largest donation (£11,000 by December 1984) to the miners’ cause: a group that called itself Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM). The film that Beresford wrote, and Matthew Warchus eventually directed, is called Pride – it’s about this stranger-than-fiction teaming-up. Beresford knows that the first question on our minds is: “Why?” The answer comes from the protagonist, Mark Ashton, a gay man who’s the self-appointed leader of LGSM. When invited to Dulais, Ashton goes up on stage before the bewildered miners and says, “We’ve been through some of the things you’ve been through.” Later, he adds, “What’s the point of supporting gay rights and not anyone else’s rights?” He knows what it’s like to be marginalised, to be persecuted by the government. He knows what it’s like to be picked on by cops and the tabloids. He knows what it’s like to fight for rights. Now, he’s recognising another fight for rights.

Pride, which was released in 2014, is having its India premiere today at Reel Desires: Chennai International Queer Film Festival 2015. I was invited to a press screening last week and, after the moist-eyed end, I wasn’t surprised to learn that the film received a standing ovation at its Cannes premiere. It went on to win the Queer Palm award, an independently sponsored prize for LGBT-relevant films among the entries playing in and out of competition at the festival. Pride is certainly more crowd-pleasing than the previous year’s winner, Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake, which features graphic sex and a pessimistic worldview. I’m not comparing the two films. I’m just saying that we need (and need to recognise) films that exist across the spectrum of human experience.

The best LGBT-themed films I’ve seen recently have all been a little dark, a little doomy. There was Stranger by the Lake, in which a man seeks a relationship with a hunk who may be a serial killer. There was the astounding Blue Is the Warmest Colour, which got a lot of attention for its sex scenes but is more about laying bare the psyches of two girls who tumble into a relationship. Then there was Weekend, another superb dissection – this time, a male couple – of a relationship that comes with a very short expiry date. Pride, in comparison, is like a few dozen rays of sunshine – which isn’t to say it’s completely free of gloom. There is, of course, the fate of the miners, who are dismayed, at first, at being “backed up by perverts.” Then there’s the time frame, the early 1980s. AIDS was beginning to make its presence felt, further marginalising the marginalised. An unsympathetic character in the film dubs it “Anally Injected Death Sentence.”

But the overall mood is that of a rom-com. Despite all the “Better Blatant Than Latent” banners, Beresford makes sure not to exclude mainstream viewers. There’s no sex. There are comforting clichés about the gay man’s inability to keep still in the face of disco music. There’s even one of those scenes where one person gets up and begins to sing an anthem, and slowly, others get up and join in… Yes, it is bread we fight for — but we fight for roses, too! Could Pride have been pricklier, more political? Perhaps. But then, it might not have been so audience-friendly, and sometimes, as Mary Poppins wisely said, a spoonful of sugar can help the medicine go down. And the patients aren’t always gays and lesbians and miners. They’re the people under these labels – the man who hasn’t spoken to his mother in 16 years; the student who fears coming out; the activist who needs to learn that activism cannot define his life. The advice he gets was, for me, the film’s most poignant moment: “Don’t give it all to the fight. Save some for home.”

Loved Pride when it came out(pun intended). There are just so many moments that you can go back to, the old lady interested in the dietary choices, the discussion of how many gays they would take in. The way in which they have managed to maintain the humor and the lighthearted tone without undermining the events happening in the background is amazing. My favourite quip is when Blake was asked to tone down the flamboyance, he replies, ” I haven’t spoken 1950’s in quite a while”. It’s definitely one of the finest British movie to be released last year.

Weekend was one movie that broke my heart. And actually if you see, it didn’t need to be gay movie, per se. Replace one of the men with a woman and it would have made no difference. But I still wondered when would we Indians be finally be capable of producing such a movie. Such impeccable writing.

“Blue…” tore me up. I think it’s a fantastic movie made for a mainstream gaze. Nothing really that pathbreaking about it, when you consider the number of “desirable” boxes checked off. Secondly, switch Emma’s gender, and you have a (nearly) postgraduate man sexually grooming a fifteen year old child.

In the vein of off-topic things that merit your attention, I hope you get to get a chance to see “Haraam Khor.” That Nawazuddin Siddiqi, I tell ya. Not afraid of playing ugly ugly characters. And the movie is such a quilt of clash. It deals with these uncomfortable adult themes and allows the lens to be one of childlike whimsy.

I didn’t mind the constant in-your-face projection of the male genitalia ., the movie was just boring. This is however a problem of a lot of the festival films (of all types) – there is like 90%+ dredge and you spend your time trying to watch the rest of the 10%.

I have not seen the recent movies that you mentioned. But one movie that moved me tremendously was “Longtime Companion.” The movie focused on the AIDS epidemic of the 80s and it did so in a very subtle manner, humanizing every one of its characters (esp. the one played by Bruce Davison), making you feel for them as many of them met with a sad end…

On the topic of less-gloomy LGBT-themed movies, a couple of years ago I chanced upon ‘It’s my party’ movie in youtube and really really liked it. The topic is indeed AIDS and thereby inherently sad but its been so wonderfully handled with warmth and wit and humour (the ending did have me crying my eyes out though).

Adding to my earlier comment on ‘It’s my party’ movie, I saw it again a couple of months ago and noticed a lot of symmetry in the movie, which I definitely didn’t notice during my earlier viewing (but I guess a movie based on a personal story from a well-established Hollywood director was always going to be appreciable for aspects other than the story whether the movie-watcher recognises those or not). Anyway, guess I have to thank brangan for that as I think reading his reviews has made an impact on the way I watch movies – the symmetry aspect for instance I learnt from his ‘Subramaniapuram’ review..